Comics / Spotlight

Avengers/JLA - Halftime

By The Reverend
October 26, 2003 - 13:18

George Perez is the man who got me to read comic books. Oh, sure, by 1981, I had plenty of copies of Batman, Detective Comics, Incredible Hulk, and Justice League of America lying around my room (a fairly spotless room, even back then). But in third grade, I was into superheroes in general, and any medium available at the time could satiate my tastes. As the 1970s came to a close, there were plenty of ways for me to get my "heroes in tights" fix:

On television, there were at least two prime-time series based on comic book superheroes, Wonder Woman, and The Incredible Hulk, and I was all over CBS's attempts to make shows out of Captain America, Spider-Man, and Dr. Strange (all really, really bad when you see them now). During the day, I inundated myself with reruns of Batman and Adventures of Superman. Even daytime repeats of the Japanese series Ultraman and Johnny Socko & Giant Robot were must-see viewing for me just as important as the American shows were, and they followed many of the traditional superhero principles.

The first two Superman movies, to me, were just as important, if not more so, than the Star Wars films. Just curious, am I alone in that sentiment?

Remember the books & records?? I was always getting those. I had no solid allegiances to any particular comic book company back then. I followed the ones with the Marvel characters, as well as DC, and even Star Trek and Six Million Dollar Man.

Coloring books. Sweet Christ, I would kill to get those books back, "unused." Every now and then, I recall something from one of the coloring books that were made back in the Seventies and early Eighties and chuckle at how relatively mature they were, or at least not infantile, considering the medium. I wish it was possible to find these, because I know some were produced no differently than the comic books at that time, and the material was hardly what you'd find in coloring books for Dora the Explorer or Bob the Builder nowadays.

Going back to television, the cartoons. Where to begin there? SuperFriends (season in, season out), The Thing, Batman's solo adventures on CBS, The Marvel Heroes cartoons from the 1960s with animation that made South Park look revolutionary, the Fantastic Four cartoon with that f***ing H.E.R.B.I.E. robot. There's others I could mention, but…

I had a point to this, right? Oh, yeah! I had dozens of ways to follow superheroes without ever visiting the comic book store. Granted, when I was in third grade in 1980, the idea of a store devoted to comic books was pure fantasy. But back in those days, our family was fresh off a move from the Detroit area to the uncharted western frontier that was Colorado Springs, Colorado. I recall having a rough go at it the first couple of years because I had tons of friends from school as well as through my parents' social circles in Michigan that I left behind. Moving to Colorado seemed like a big step backwards for me personally. So I had a little more time on my hands in the new town to frequent the fancy 7-11 that was in our neighborhood.

And that's when I saw it: New Teen Titans #16. I was so blown away by this team of young superheroes, some who were totally new to me, led by Robin the Boy Wonder. Turns out that upon reading the book that he wasn't so much a boy anymore, and he was hardly even Batman's partner. But the deal-breaker with this book was the art. Despite being quite familiar with Neal Adams work on characters like Batman, Green Arrow, and Green Lantern, the work of George Perez clicked for me in seeing superhero characters that I grew up with in a realistic light. In all the years of watching SuperFriends, did anyone get a view of Dick Grayson behind the mask? Hardly. In 1981 and '82, George Perez helped educate me on the idea(s) that not only did Batman have a young counterpart, but so did Wonder Woman and Flash (Wonder Girl and Kid Flash), but that there were now some heroes for my peers to relate to in certain ways (Cyborg, Starfire, Changeling, and Raven). These were kids who kicked a$$, yet they dated, disagreed with parents, and had questions about issues that couldn't be solved by all the superpowers in the world. (One could argue that I should've become a hardcore Marvel zombie with this rationale, but their books were the epitome of inaccessible to me, and DC was always more user-friendly). More than anything, though, I kept coming back to the art.

How convenient was it that the other book I gravitated toward at this time was also drawn by George Perez? Justice League of America was always an extension of my love of the SuperFriends, and my decades-long taste for team books. I've always felt that while superheroes are perfectly cool when they fly solo, they're always more interesting when they work together. Perez really only did a handful of JLA interiors, but he contributed many a cover to the series, always important to kids who dig the dazzle of a flashy front. My all-time favorite story is JLA #200. Besides getting many of DC's Hall of Fame artists to contribute to this book, the story had every JLAer in team history together in a story primarily drawn by Perez. In every case, I felt that George was drawing these characters as definitively as possible. A few issues before #200, Perez drew a three-part story that educated me on the "First Family" of DC Comics: the Justice Society of America. I was in Heaven. You mean to tell me that besides the JLA, whom I hold dear to my young-a$$ heart, has a group a counterparts a generation older than them that still fought the good fight??? Two Flashes?? TWO HAWKMEN??? This was all too much, and it was all in the span of a year. DC had the New Teen Titans, the JLA, and the JSA, and George Perez was filling me in all of them

I'm not ignorant though. Like a lot of creators whose work I followed in the 1980s and into the '90s, I later became familiar with the work Perez did cutting his teeth as a Marvel Comics employee. But that was in the past, and a ten-year-old kid doesn't have the resources to start buying books from years past just because Perez's name was on them. I was living in the now, and George Perez made me a regular DC customer with everything he did. Crisis, anyone? As far as I'm concerned, GP is easily in my top six of greatest artists to grace DC Comics (just for giggles, in no particular order, the others would be Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, Neal Adams, Carmine Infantino, and Curt Swan).

As a fan, George Perez's current output, seen in JLA/Avengers (or depending on the publisher, Avengers/JLA), this was huge for me, because his work on anything DC-related since 1990 has been minimal at best (But don't get me wrong, if his name was on it I WAS ON IT). I can't recall the whole story, but I know that some of the editorial decisions regarding his work on War of the Gods had Perez leaving the company on bad terms. Overall, Perez hasn't done much with the company that saw his art get me into comics regularly in the first place. Plenty has changed in the DC Universe since Perez dissected it and reconstructed it with the help of his Titans collaborator, writer Marv Wolfman, in Crisis on Infinite Earths and History of the DC Universe, and I was anxious to see what he'd make of it now in the 21st century.

Perez has never let me down, and I didn't expect this Marvel/DC crossover -- something overdue by twenty years - to change that thinking. Perez has an uncanny knack of meeting, and often exceeding, expectations. We're halfway through this four-part miniseries now, ( AND IF YOU HAVE PROBLEMS WITH SPOILERS, STOP READING NOW!!!), and I'm happier than Thanos in Infinity Isotoners for Christmas. Here are some of the reasons why in issue #2:

Fanboys, emphasis on the "boys" part of that term, have to be pleased that the JLA and Avengers are doing plenty of fighting. Whack, whack!! Smash, smash!! Some uninventive people out there may cry foul that Captain America and Batman essentially called it even after sizing each other up, but I give writer Kurt Busiek credit for establishing these two as the guys who'd realize that time spent street-fighting is time not saving the universe. Something about pages 6-7 with them reminded me of Frank Miller's work on these two in the mid-Eighties. Never a bad thing.

The outcome of Superman and Thor's fight was moving, literally AND figuratively. Mano y mano, my money's always been on the Man of Steel, but to see the other Avengers get so upset that they flat out wailed on him as a group as payback was awe-inspiring. Luckily for Superman that the Marvel Universe isn't powered by a red sun.

If I had a complaint, it's that the overall pacing of this issue was a bit crammed. The lineups of each team was pretty much set with who you saw on the cover, but the way the heroes bounced from place to place was dizzying at times, and the smaller panels out of necessity prohibited Perez from getting in some good splash pages. The book opened with a doozy (the first pages of the two teams' slugfest), and that was about it. The part where Superman dealt Thor a blow "up to eleven" was worthy of it's own page in the same way that issue #1 did one at the end of the book with Kal-El being leveled by the Odinson's hammer.

I do have to say that this story is as fitting a sequel to Crisis on Infinite Earths as I personally require (not like I ever thought it needed a sequel). Considering the recaps of Krona's story were essentially pulled from that book, I'm just waiting to see the Anti-Monitor make an appearance. Something about the universe-shattering pace of this story encompassing the worlds of DC and Marvel makes sense as the next step up from what was produced back in 1985.

Colorist Tom Smith may very well be the MVP of this series. As good of a story as Busiek has written to date, and as extraordinary as Perez's pencils and inks have been, Smith's amazing use of color has held this very busy story together. Reminds me of two years ago, when Lynn Varley opted to employ some experimental coloring techniques to Frank Miller's sequel to Dark Knight Returns to less than exceptional results. Tom Smith was born to bring color to George Perez's art, and JLA/Avengers could be his Citizen Kane. Varley's experiments were more like Gus Van Sant's remake of Psycho: ill-advised.

Captain America (and the Thing) chillin' in the Batcave. Way cool. "You… lost a partner?" Beauty.

Was there any doubt that Wonder Woman was going to garner some face time with the Avengers' Hercules, the "despoiler" of Hippolyta? Notice how he didn't deny it either?

It's stunning to think that we are now halfway through the pairing of the Avengers and the Justice League, something that was supposed to be part of comic book legend twenty years ago. This is the Beach Boys' Smile album, for those in the know. It was going to take a NLCS Game 6 clusterf*** of biblical proportions to screw this story up now and I don't see that happening. There has been too much care and love put into this book, and it shows in every beautiful page. If this is truly George Perez's final statement on the Marvel and DC universes, all I can say is WELL SAID.

R.I.P. Fred "Rerun" Berry: 1951-2003

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12